


No Matter How They Toss the Dice, It Had to Be

by jellybeanforest



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Tony Stark, Brief mentions of Tony Stark/Others, Cap-Ironman Bingo, Cap_Ironman Tiny Reverse Bang, Classism, Depression, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Gay Steve Rogers, Getting Together, Grief, Growing Up Together, Homophobia, Imaginary Friends, Jealousy, Loneliness, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Peer Pressure, Playing with Lego, Racism, Slice of Life, poor coping mechanisms, tony builds a family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:35:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26125846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellybeanforest/pseuds/jellybeanforest
Summary: Tony Stark is a desperately lonely child, ignored by his father and largely isolated from other kids due to his insular upbringing. When his family hires a new live-in housekeeper, she brings her young son, Steve Rogers, with her to live in the mansion. Though Steve misses their old neighborhood and his friends, the boy becomes Tony’s best friend, even if he’s not Steve’s. As they grow up together and experience the loss of their respective parents much too soon, Tony develops feelings for Steve. Unfortunately, the man is so painfully, so obviously straight that there’s no way anything can ever come of it.Right?For the 2020 Cap-IronMan Tiny Reverse Bang and Cap-IronMan Bingo 2020 Round 2 – S5 Photo. Based on a moodboard (COMMANDER) by imaginestevetony.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 40
Kudos: 122
Collections: 2020 Cap/Iron Man Tiny Reverse Bang, Captain America/Iron Man Bingo





	1. Imagine Me and You, I Do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imaginestevetony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginestevetony/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Sweet Life...](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25286008) by [imaginestevetony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginestevetony/pseuds/imaginestevetony). 



> The title of this fic is from the song “Happy Together” by The Turtles. It’s pretty much the theme song for this story.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An eleven-year-old Tony Stark meets and befriends the son of the new housekeeper.

Tony presses his nose to the glass as he watches Jarvis escort their new housekeeper, Ms. Sarah, and her son to the in-law suite that served as a servants’ quarters. Steve is small, scrawny, and blond and (if Tony plays his cards right) his new best friend. Jarvis and Ana never had children, and the other students at his secondary prep school were all so much older than Tony, but Steven is eleven, the same age as him, and will be living on-site at the mansion. He is, in effect, a captive audience.

Tony hopes he doesn’t screw up.

He wants to go down right now and introduce himself, but maybe that will come across as too eager, too desperate, like when he had gone to lunch on the first day of school and realized he didn’t know where to sit because he was too new and too young and everyone else already had friends from middle school. He had come to realize that the key to being cool was being aloof, but by then, it was too late. His reputation as a needy baby had already been cemented.

But Steven Rogers represents a fresh start. He doesn’t go to his school; he doesn’t know him as the weird child prodigy (key word being _child_ ), who has trouble relating to his much-older peers who seem to all be into cars and swapping spit with the first girl who might let them touch her boob after three months of going steady or whatever. Tony doesn’t get the appeal, but that’s not the point. The point is that he only has one shot at a good first impression, and he needs to make it count.

And so when he finally meets the other boy after he and his mother have moved in and settled, Tony pretends he’s not nearly vibrating with excitement at the prospect of his very first age-appropriate friend who isn’t Jarvis.

His mother had stopped by the game room, the mansion’s newest residents in tow. “Tony honey, have you met Ms. Sarah?”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, miss,” Tony says, but from behind his sunglasses, his eyes flit around her to catch a glimpse of Steven.

“Such a polite young man,” she comments.

“And Ms. Sarah has a son who’s your age. Isn’t that nice, Tony? Why don’t you show him around your play room?”

Tony agrees, and after the adults leave, the other boy shoves his hands in his pockets. “The name’s Steve.”

Tony pulls down his shades to give him a cursory glance, just like in the movies. “Tony.”

“…Why are you wearing dark glasses inside the house?” Steve asks with all the bluntness of his eleven years. “Are you blind? Do you need help finding your cane?” He surveys the general vicinity, looking for the signature white cane of the visually-impaired. “There’s a blind kid in my class, and sometimes she wears sunglasses indoors, too.”

Thoroughly embarrassed, Tony removes them entirely. “I’m not blind,” he protests.

“Oh, so you can see a little?”

“No, I– there’s nothing wrong with my eyes.”

“Of course not. Everyone’s different.” Steve rolls in place, heel-toe then back again, before blurting out, “So, is it true you have super-hearing? To make up for…” he points at his own eyes, but probably realizing that either Tony can’t see him or that it’s rude to point out someone’s disability, he quickly drops the gesture. “Bucky – that’s my best friend, you know – he says that if you lose one sense, the others get even better.”

Tony grits his teeth. “I mean I see perfectly fine.”

“But the sunglasses…”

“Forget it, okay? I was… I was just testing them out. For science,” he says, internally screaming. _What does that even mean?_

Steve looks dubious, but he doesn’t call Tony out on his transparent lie. “Oh-kay… so, um… what’s there to do around here?”

“There’s a giant TV where we can screen movies,” Tony fumbles, trying to remember what cool kids on TV like, “or… well, there’s a pool, and uh…”

But Steve is already looking past him into his expansive game room. “Are those Legos?” he asks, referring to Tony’s collection of kits he had built, torn down, and spliced together into his own make-believe hodgepodge metropolis.

“…Yes?”

“That’s so cool! I’ve never seen so many! Can we play with those?”

“You like Legos?”

Steve shrugs. “Who doesn’t? I never had very many on account of… well, mostly, I played with Bucky’s WWII set, you know. We had a whole thing where we were like soldiers who saved people from the bad guys.”

_It’s too good to be true._

“Really? I have the same thing, except mine are superheroes,” Tony shows Steve his set-up. “Welcome to Stark-tropolis, home of the Avengers.” He picks up each minifigure, excitedly introducing them to Steve in turn. He holds up a red-head wearing black. “This is ex-KGB assassin Natasha Romanov, named after that princess who went missing after the commies killed her family…” then a man wearing glasses and a lab coat “and this is Bruce Banner. He’s a super smart biologist, but he has anger issues and transforms into a big unstoppable green monster when upset.” He picks up a minifigure he scavenged from a rare Norse mythology set he got in Norway – “And this is Thor, God of Thunder, maybe you’ve heard of him; he was kicked out of Asgard by his dad for being too much of a smart-ass” – followed by another he had taken from an old limited-edition Robin Hood set. He had painted this figure purple as it used to be his favorite color, but now he has regrets considering the poor guy no longer blended into Sherwood Forest. “And this is Hawkeye. He’s an expert marksman and spy. He talks constantly, never shuts up really.”

“Who’s that?” Steve asks, pointing to a figure in red.

“The piece-de-resistance, the leader of the whole shebang… his name is Iron Man. He’s a billionaire and a genius – no one is smarter than him – and he designs and builds all the Avengers’ tech and pays for everything and makes everyone look cooler. But he has a bad heart, which he fixed by becoming part cyborg.” Iron Man is his personal favorite, the very first superhero he had designed for his team. He has always been there for Tony, even when precious few others had been.

Tony pulls out a paper and some colored pencils. “You want to design a superhero to add to the Avengers?” he offers magnanimously. “I don’t usually let just anyone join,” he adds, playing if off like he doesn’t desperately want to play with the other boy, like he’s the one doing Steve a favor.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Seeing as how you’re going to be living here from now on–” He must have said something wrong because Steve’s face drops. “…you’re staying, right?” Tony hadn’t considered it, but a few of the kids at his school have two families. Sometimes they live with Dad, and sometimes they live with Mom, and Ms. Sarah didn’t seem to be married at the moment. What if…

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m staying.” He sits down with the proffered art supplies, sketching out the outline of a large, muscular man.

Tony decides to do the same, drawing his signature character, though with less competency than Steve.

“It’s kind of hard, you know,” Steve says. He doesn’t look up as he clarifies, “Moving sucks. I liked where we were living, and I miss my friends. I didn’t want to leave, but Mom says this neighborhood is better.”

“We can be friends,” Tony replies, trying not to let too much of his hope seep through.

Steve nods. “I’d like that.”

Tony’s heart soars. “Me too.”

By the time they finish their drawings, Steve has produced a passably good likeness of a muscle-bound action hero wearing a skin-tight uniform in a design reminiscent of an American flag. He has real artistic talent and a true appreciation of the male form a-la-Arnold Schwarzenegger. By comparison, Iron Man is all awkward angles and weird proportions more conducive to a robot than a person.

Steve ogles Tony’s admittedly-subpar drawing. “Why does he have a clamshell on his head?”

“It’s not a clam; it’s a helmet,” Tony protests. “He built this cool high-tech armor to fight crime. That’s how he got his name: Iron Man.”

“More like shell-head.”

“It’s not…” He narrows his eyes at Steve’s drawing, zeroing in on its design flaws. “Well, what about your’s? What’s with the wings on his head?”

Steve holds up his paper. “It makes him faster. He’s super strong and super fast and can heal real well because he’s invulnerable, you see, and–”

“You can’t stack him with so many abilities. He needs a weakness.” A good hero always had something. Hawkeye is deaf; Black Widow is haunted by wicked deeds past; Thor has been cast out of his family due to hubris; Bruce Banner can’t control the Hulk; and Iron Man has his bum ticker.

Steve must not grasp the concept because he suggests, “His weakness is that he’s too noble.”

Tony is unimpressed. “That’s not a real weakness,” he says flatly.

“Why not? It gets him into trouble all the time, because the bad guys always cheat, but he can’t, and then he beats them all anyway.”

He wants to tell Steve he can’t play Avengers if he’s not going to take this seriously, but then Tony will have no one else with whom to play. “Alright, _fine_. His weakness is _nobility,_ even though it’s super lame and not a real weakness.” He pouts. “What’s his name anyway? Wing-head?” Perhaps they can be a matching set: shellhead and winghead.

“Captain America,” Steve states with no hesitation, not even a hint of doubt as to the pertinence of such a name.

“…Seriously? That’s what you’re going with, huh?” Well, that explained the stars and stripes on his costume, but still. Tony points at the wings yet again. “So, are those like… baby bald-eagle wings or something?”

“Hey, Captain America is cool,” he protests, putting his drawing next to Tony’s. “He’s an American hero who punches Nazis, because there’s nothing more American than punching a Nazi, or that’s what my Bubbe always used to say.”

_Nazis?_

“How old is he supposed to be?”

“I don’t know. An adult. Twenty-five maybe?” Twenty-five seemed old enough to know what you’re doing but not too old to think better of it.

There is one small snag, one tiny detail that Steve had obviously not considered. “Nazis are from like forty years ago,” Tony points out, unimpressed with Steve’s clumsy integration into his carefully-constructed, realistically-gritty superhero universe populated by random Lego minifigures stolen from various sets. Backstory is key after all.

But Steve just waves off his concern. “So he time-traveled or something. It’s not important. He’s the new hero in town, ready to punch bad guys, some of which are totally Nazis.”

Now that’s just lazy and most importantly, “It doesn’t fit into the Avengers universe at all!” Tony complains, utterly frustrated. He takes a deep breath, summoning the combined knowledge of eleven years of pre-K programming and after-school specials. Based on everything he’s ever seen on the topic, friendship is about compromise, and so he suggests, “Okay, how about this: He was frozen in a block of ice for like forty years, and the Avengers defrosted him and invited him to join the team. He agreed because he’s too _noble_ ” – he can’t help but roll his eyes – “to refuse. Plus, his old nemesis – who is a Nazi, alright? – has resurfaced as a top villain in world affairs.”

“And then the villain takes off his person mask, and he’s like… I don’t know, a bloody skull underneath.” Because Nazis don’t deserve skin, apparently.

Tony thinks there might be something wrong with his new friend. “Okay. Fine. Whatever,” he concedes. “His name can be Red Skull.”

And so they set up Tony’s play set, Iron Man and the Avengers in a yellow submarine with a blonde minifigure designated Captain America placed outside ‘floating’ in the deepest abyss of the ocean.

Tony narrates the action. “…Until finally – Naught remains but a frozen, petrified figure in a state of suspended animation,” he says, moving the submarine in a slow arc around the minifigure, “a figure which drifts past the undersea craft of – The Avenger!”

“The submarine is called ‘the Avenger’?” Steve inquires, getting caught up in the smallest of details as if he himself wasn’t about to half-ass his primary character’s entire backstory.

“Yes. Now come on, say something.”

And so he picks up Thor, imbuing him the deepest, most-authoritative voice he can manage, “Stop the engines, Iron Man! There is someone out there!”

Tony grins. “See, now you’ve got it.” Perhaps this won’t be so bad after all, this friendship thing.

Steve eyes Captain America, suspended within the billowy softness of a jumbo cotton ball. “Hey… What if his best friend is named Bucky, who he’s sad about leaving behind in the past?” he says as an aside, utterly breaking character.

Scratch that. This entire exercise – this ‘friendship’ – is going to be a trial.

It is not.

Contrary to Tony’s expectations, he finds himself liking Steve. The other boy may be stubborn, his imagination lacking a certain sense of narrative cohesion, but he is fun and compassionate and willing to entertain Tony’s flights of fancy, so really he’s the best friend Tony has ever had.

“Hey Winghead! Catch!” Tony tosses Steve a minifigure painted in the likeness of Captain America. “I thought since he’s going to be more-or-less a permanent fixture of the Avengers, he should at least look like himself.”

Steve turns the minifigure in his hand, noting the tiny wings painted into the side of his head. “…Thanks, Shellhead.”

“I thought this time Red Skull can try to gather all the supervillains into a cabal of some sort…”

It’s going so well that Steve invites Tony to his old neighborhood to meet his other friends, including the infamous Bucky Barnes.

“Who’s Abercrombie & Fitch here?”

“This is Tony. My mom works for his parents,” Steve replies.

Bucky gives Tony a curt once-over, likely sizing up the competition, so Tony stands up straighter, his chest puffed out in false bravado as he meets the other boy’s eye.

“You hungry? My mom made baloney sandwiches,” Bucky offers them both.

Tony’s brow crinkles. “…What’s baloney?”

“Really, Steve?” Bucky stage-whispers to his friend before turning to Tony to explain, “It’s meat. You eat it on white bread with mustard. Sorry, we don’t have caviar. Fresh out.”

“Bucky, cut it out, okay?” Steve admonishes his friend

So Bucky is a dick. Two can play at that game.

Tony crosses his arms. “Do we each get our own sandwich, or will we be sharing?”

“Tony!”

“What? It’s only polite to ask, and if we’re sharing,” he looks past Steve at Bucky. “I call dibs on Steve as my sandwich buddy. No offense, but I don’t know where you’ve been.”

“The same place Steve’s been,” Bucky replies, his tone equally cutting. “Being poor ain’t contagious.”

“No, but being a jerk is.” It’s catching already.

Bucky counters, “If that’s true, I want you to stand three feet away from me at all times.”

“Guys,” Steve says, stepping between them. “Can we just… I don’t know, get some sandwiches and watch some cartoons or something?”

It only goes downhill from there.

Tony leaps over the back of the couch, dropping into the end seat next to Steve sitting in the middle. “Come on. _Danger Mouse_ is almost on!”

“What’s _Danger Mouse_?” Bucky asks.

“Steve’s favorite show about a secret agent who is a mouse. It’s huge in the UK.”

Bucky frowns. “Your choices are ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. We don’t get the fancy British channels here.”

“It’s okay,” Steve interjects. “We can watch something else.”

Tony shrugs. “Alright… What kind of movies do you have?” He looks over at their TV set up, “Hey, where’s your VCR?”

The air in the room becomes positively frigid.

“…How about we go down to the park and maybe see if we can join a baseball game?” Steve suggests instead.

“Alright,” Bucky concedes even as he thins his eyes at Tony from the other side of Steve. “Fair warning, we play ball in a grass field, not Yankee Stadium.”

As much as Tony hates sharing Steve with Bucky, he likes the other boys at the park even less. Dum Dum is loud and abrasive. Jimmy has a giant chip on his shoulder, and the other Jimmy goes by Jacques because his family is from France, though the only Paris he’s ever been to is in Texas. Gabe picks Tony for his team second to last over Percival (nicknamed Pinky), so maybe he’s okay.

But what’s worse than having less of Steve’s attention is how different the other boy acts when amongst his old friends.

“My uncle is staying with us, and my mom got mad he brought ‘trash’ into the house, so she threw it out, and I managed to snag it before the garbage man did,” Pinky tells the others, pulling out a coveted Playboy from his backpack.

“Helloooo Miss July,” Dum Dum whistles appreciatively, turning the centerfold on its side to better appreciate the lady’s assets. “Hey Stevie, get a load of this; why don’t you?”

“Is that what girls looks like under… you know?” Jimmy whispers, reverently.

Tony rolls his eyes. They’re just as bad as his older classmates salivating over girls. Steve’s focus on things that were _not_ boobs is one of the boy’s better attributes; it’s partially why they got along so well. “Come on, can’t we just play on? Steve’s not even–”

“Nice!” Steve declares, his eyes roving the page, engrossed in every curve. “Do you think they all look like that? With the…” his finger is lower, so he’s likely referring to her butt.

Tony is thoroughly disappointed.

“Careful, that’s my future wife you’re putting your mitts on,” Pinky pipes up.

And so by the time Jarvis picks them up to return home, Tony is short with Steve, giving him one- or two-word answers to every avenue of conversation Steve attempts, and the minute Jarvis parks, he stomps through the front doors and up to his room to sulk, rudely ignoring Ms. Sarah’s “Did you boys have fun?” and leaving a bewildered Steve behind.

Tony can’t quite put his finger on why he is so upset. Perhaps it’s disappointment that Steve is the same as any other boy, that maybe there’s something broken in Tony that he can’t muster up the same enthusiasm at the prospect of kissing girls. It just didn’t seem hygienic is all.

“Shellhead? Are you in there?” Steve calls from the other side of the door, followed by subtle knocking. When Tony doesn’t respond, he continues. “I don’t know why you’re sore with me. Maybe if you’d come out and–”

The door sweeps open.

“You’re a big phoney, Steve Rogers, and I don’t like phonies,” Tony declares.

“…Okay,” Steve says slowly.

“Okay? _Okay?_ That’s it? That’s all you have to say for yourself.”

“Maybe if you started making sense–”

So Tony clarifies, “You were drooling over some girly magazine when I know you don’t really like that stuff.”

Steve’s reply is squirrelly, though Tony is too annoyed to notice. “What do you mean? Of course I like girls. Who doesn’t?”

“You don’t,” Tony insists. “When it’s just the two of us, you don’t talk nothing about girls. It’s superheroes and Danger Mouse and whether vanilla is better than chocolate – which it is _not!_ – and then you hang out with Bucky, Pinky, Dum Dum, and the others, and it’s all about boobs and kissing and whatever.”

Steve tries to placate him. “Look, sometimes… Sometimes, you talk about different things with different friends, okay?”

“You’re pretending to be something you’re not.”

“It’s still me. It’s just… a different part of me. A different face I’m showing.”

“So, you’re two-faced,” Tony quips, “Good to know.”

“It’s not…” Steve throws up his hands in frustration. “You don’t get it because you’re rich and you’ve lived here all your life. You’ve always been… You only ever have to be one thing to one person. Because you don’t got no other friends.”

Tony’s eyes widen; his nostrils flare. “Get out.”

Steve is immediately apologetic. “Tony–”

Tony slams the door in his face.

Perhaps it is the nature of having only one friend or the fact that Steve literally lives with him that Tony eventually comes around, even without an overt apology on either side.

He’s sitting in the game room, quietly playing with his Avengers’ Lego set. Captain America and Iron Man had had a fight – an ideological disagreement leading to a Civil War of sorts that had split the Avengers into two camps – and Tony didn’t know how to resolve it, how to bring them back together.

“Hey.” Steve says from behind him.

Tony looks over his shoulder, finding the other boy with his gaze downturned and hands shoved in his pockets. “Hey,” he replies.

“…Can I play?”

“I don’t know. _Can_ you?”

Steve resists the urge to roll his eyes at how pedantic his friend is being. “ _May_ I play then?”

“…Yes,” Tony says, scooting over as Steve takes his seat beside him.

“What’s going on in Stark-tropolis?”

“Captain America and Iron Man are fighting because they can’t agree on anything. It’s tearing the Avengers apart.”

“Sounds like a big problem,” Steve observes.

Tony nods. “Yeah.”

“But we can figure it out, right?”

“…Yeah.”

* * *

It isn’t the last Tony sees of Steve’s friends. After the first time, he tags along quite often, not wanting to be left behind in the mansion with only the adults for company. Their mothers encourage the friendship, and Steve’s friends (including Bucky) eventually warm to Tony, and though they rib on him for his wealth, Tony quickly learns he’s not the only one with a sore spot they like to prod.

“School just hasn’t been the same without you,” Jacques says as they sit in the shade of a large tree, the weather too hot and muggy for much else. “Freddy’s been trying to horn in on Peggy since you’ve been gone.”

“Who’s Peggy?”

“Stevie’s girlfriend,” Bucky supplies.

Steve blushes. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Yet,” adds Dum Dum. “Steve’s been crushing on her for like two whole years. He’s even saving his first kiss for her.” He makes a kissy face, and Steve socks him in the shoulder, much to the boy’s displeasure. “What?” he says, rubbing his arm. “You don’t want Richie Rich to know you’ve never even kissed nobody?”

Bucky comes to Steve’s defense. “Lay off him, okay? Stevie can not-kiss anybody he wants.”

But Dum Dum is unimpressed. “The way he’s going, he’ll be ninety-five before he gets his first kiss.”

“I will _not_ ,” Steve protests.

Tired of their squabbling, Gabe asks, “Have you had your first kiss, Tony?”

“It doesn’t count if you had to pay for it,” Bucky reminds him, though Pinky kicks him for his trouble. He seems really interested in the answer.

Perhaps Tony is a hypocrite after all because he lies through his teeth. “I… I– um, I have.”

The others seem surprised and much more attentive now. “Really? With who?” Gabe presses.

“I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Because he’s lying,” Bucky adds.

“I am not!”

“Then why doesn’t she have a name, huh?”

Bucky has forced his hand.

“Her name was Giselle, alright? And she’s… um, she’s not from around here,” Tony says, rather sheepishly. “She lives in Canada, in um– in Montreal, up in Quebec, you know. Because she’s French Canadian. We met during an exchange program last year.” It’s a solid story; one they can’t possibly refute. “She does some light modeling in Quebec, for like… the Gap and stuff. Just commercial though, not runway yet.”

_Oh God. Too far! Too far! Abort!_

“…I guess that checks out,” Jacques concedes. “Giselle _is_ a French name.”

“What was it like?” Jimmy asks.

Pinky leans forward. “Did she use her tongue?”

Jimmy looks disgusted. “Ew. Gross, Pinky.”

“I saw it on late-night TV. People kiss with their tongues, I swear!”

Steve ignores them both to inquire “…Did it feel nice?”

Tony hadn’t meant to posit himself as the neighborhood kissing expert, but he supposes if he’s in for a penny, he’s in for a pound. “Uh… Yeah, I guess it was okay. Like she was pretty good, but I’ve kissed a lot of girls since then, and they’re all pretty different, you know,” he hedges. “So, it’s hard to say.”

This way, when the other boys finally get their first kisses, they won’t be able to compare it to Tony’s ‘experience.’

“So… what was it like? The first time?” Jimmy still wants to know.

“Gosh, it’s been so long… it’s hard to describe, you know. Not everything feels like something else.” Tony says, getting fidgety. He spies an ice cream cart on the other side of the park. “Hey so… ice cream? My treat.”

* * *

Steve is quiet at home, much more pensive than usual. When Tony asks him if he wants to play Avengers, Steve declines, instead inquiring, “Have you really already kissed a lot of girls, shellhead?”

Tony doesn’t exactly like lying to Steve, so he deflects, “You’re still stuck on that?”

“It’s just… well, I haven’t kissed anyone, and what if everyone else has their first kiss, and I don’t, and then I’m bad at it? What if Peggy picks Freddy over me because I miss and kiss her nostril or something? Where do I put my hands?” He holds them up in front of Tony in desperation. “Or what if my tongue is weird – I mean, what am I even supposed to do with it – or what if I have bad breath? You’d tell me if I had bad breath, right?”

“Your breath is fine. Pop a mint or whatever.” That’s what they always did in the movies.

“What if she’s allergic to mint?”

Okay, now Steve is just being ridiculous. “I’m sure you’ll do fine. Tons of people kiss every day, and no one has died from it” that Tony knows of, anyway.

“Then what if I’m just plain no good at it?” Steve nearly wails.

_That’s it!_

“If I kiss you, will you shut up about it?” Tony offers.

Steve pauses, momentarily dumbstruck. “You can’t be my first kiss.”

Something in Tony’s chest dies a little at that, but he buries it deep, soldiers on. “It’s not a real first kiss. It’s just practice, so you won’t mess up the first time with Peggy.”

“…But we’re both boys.”

He rolls his eyes. “That’s why it won’t count. Duh.”

Steve seems to consider it, ultimately deciding that maybe Tony has a point. “How do we…”

Tony puts his hands on either side of Steve’s shoulders and pulls him forward just as he closes his eyes and leans in, too fast for him to think better of it. He briefly presses his lips to Steve’s then just as quickly pulls back, releasing Steve as he returns to his original position. Steve blushes. He holds his fingers to his lips, his eyes wide.

“There. Just like that,” Tony declares, his voice impressively even.

And just like that, Tony’s first kiss is gone and done. He’s elated and fluttery inside, maybe even a touch shy as he glances over at the other boy who is studiously trying not to look in his direction. It was kind of nice, a little sweet even. Maybe–

“…That was barely anything at all,” Steve has the gall to complain.

Tony’s eyes boggle. “Excuse you?”

“I mean… it’s a lot longer in the movies.”

“You’re saying you want _another_ one?” Not that Tony would be opposed to a do-over, if Steve wanted to.

_Steve didn’t want to, right?_

“No…” Steve says as he rubs the back of his neck. “I’m just saying it’s different is all.”

Tony only grumbles, “Last time I do you a favor.” He looks over at Stark-tropolis. “What do you say, Cap? Ready to save the day?”

* * *

Eventually, inevitably, Steve and Tony grow up. Legos gives way to video games when the Starks buy the first Nintendo Famicom complete with all nine games. (Tony’s favorite is Mario Bros while Steve likes Donkey Kong.)

Tony notices more of the divergence between Steve at home and Steve with the boys, the facets of his personality he displays and exaggerates in each situation, and he can’t right tell which is closer to the truth or why it matters so much to him. Perhaps Tony has always been greedy, because he wants all of Steve. He wants to know the real Steve behind all his masks, to be the one with whom he can be his true self, but the longer he knows the boy, the more he realizes that maybe Steve is right. None of them are one thing to everyone; even Tony modifies his behavior based on company. Perhaps Tony doesn’t understand who he is either.

…But at least Tony finally understands the appeal of girls after they all sneak into _Screwballs_ after watching _Something Wicked This Way Comes_ one weekend.

The only problem is the additional realization that his attraction is not limited to girls.

Tony knows enough to keep _that_ to himself. He doesn’t tell the other boys, his mother or Howard, and _especially_ not Steve.

So, in a way, Tony does learn the value of secrets.

* * *

Tony graduates his prep school three years early and gets into MIT’s engineering program. His parents are thrilled; Tony is less so.

“Don’t forget to call, shellhead,” Steve tells him on the day Tony is due to ship out. He doesn’t hug him goodbye. They’re fifteen now, almost men or so they think.

Tony rolls his eyes. “You sound exactly like my mom.”

“It’s just… you’re going all the way to Boston,” Steve says, almost plaintively. He’s going to miss him; they both will.

“It’s not that far. I’ll be home for the holidays, and if you want to visit…”

“I won’t get to see you that much anymore, you know.” He looks off to the side, at Tony’s last set of bags ready to be packed away. “It’s just… It’ll be different.”

They’ve never gone to the same school, but Steve will be starting sophomore year of high school while Tony will be matriculating into college. It’s a completely different stage of life. Steve must feel like Tony is abandoning him.

And so Tony clasps Steve’s thin shoulders and tries to assure him. “We’ll always be friends, winghead.”

They’re interrupted by Jarvis, who informs him, “Your father is waiting, Tony.”

Tony pats Steve’s shoulders before dropping his arms entirely to pick up his backpack while Jarvis collects the rest of his things. “See you at Christmas, or… you know, earlier if you’re in the Boston area.” He turns to leave.

“Tony–”

He looks back. “Yeah?”

Steve seems to hesitate, then: “Just… good luck at MIT. Study, but don’t forget to have fun, okay?” he says, a touch awkwardly. He never was a fan of goodbyes.

“Sure thing, Cap.” Tony gives him a military salute in jest. “Iron Man out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please check out the moodboard, which served as an inspiration for this fic. Additionally, the Bingo square was a picture of LEGO Cap and Iron Man standing side-by-side, so I incorporated LEGO in the fic.
> 
> Also, in the late 70s/early 80s, only 1 in 5 Americans had cable. Most families had like five channels. And VCRs came out in 1975 at a cost of $1,400, but it was around $640 in 1982 (when the average yearly income was around $14,500). Bucky thinks Tony is rubbing his family’s wealth in his face to point out to Steve how much better off he is now, and Tony doesn’t understand that the average family doesn’t have these things.


	2. If I Should Call You Up, Invest a Dime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Over the next three years, Tony makes new friends at MIT, but he always returns home to Steve. Then, shortly after Steve graduates high school, his mother dies and Tony purposely gets suspended from campus so he can come home and spend time with his oldest friend in his time of need.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to split the last chapter in two, because it got very VERY long. I also updated the tags to include racism. Tony meets Rhodey spring semester of his freshman year at MIT (circa early 1986). In late 1986, there was a study published about black student experience at MIT based on surveys of alumni who attended the university from 1969 to 1985. Many participants said they felt isolated and experienced cultural barriers with white students, and a minority (15%) experienced discrimination from classmates and white faculty (there apparently was a suggestion that they ‘go somewhere and do things you people can do’). 
> 
> In this story, Tony feels isolated because of his age, while Rhodey feels out of place in a largely white campus. Their experiences are different, but I like to think they relate as outsiders, albeit in different ways.

For Tony, the worst thing about starting a new school is how much younger he is compared to his supposed peers.

“Are you lost, kid?” another freshman on his floor asks him when he moves into his single dorm.

Tony had given him a wave and a small smile. “No, I’m a student here. The name’s Tony.”

The guy looks flabbergasted. “How old are you? Twelve?”

“Fifteen.”

“Jesus. Is MIT running a daycare center these days?”

From then on, Tony resolves to grow out his facial hair in an attempt to make himself look older. It grows in thin and patchy, but Tony cultivates it, hoping he can pass off his five-week growth as a five-o’clock shadow. It doesn’t really work. Even if his goatee had been passable, everyone already knew of Tony Stark, fifteen-year-old wunderkind. He is something of an anomaly on campus, and he wrecked the curve in all his classes, earning the ire of many an engineering student, who often jeered that the only friends he had were ones he had built himself.

(Well, joke’s on them; Tony happened to like DUM-E.)

So, he wasn’t going to win any popularity contests. And dating? Well, he could forget all about that. If no one wanted to be friends with the child prodigy, fewer still wanted to date him. It didn’t help his case that it is also illegal, at least until he turned sixteen the following May.

“How’s MIT?” Steve had often asked during their twice-a-week phone call. “Is college all it’s cracked up to be?” They had all seen the movies. Steve probably thought Tony went on panty raids fueled by underage drinking binges every weekend.

“Oh, you know how it is. Work hard; play hard,” Tony had replied flippantly, being purposely vague as he redirects the conversation back on Steve. “How’re things on your end? Did Bucky ever get around to teaching you how to fight?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My technique is flawless.”

“Yeah, and if you kept to your weight class, maybe you’d even have a shot,” he quips. Steve was always the type to bite off more than he could chew, throwing himself headfirst into fights he couldn’t possibly win like a rabid Chihuahua. He wasn’t going to take down anyone nipping at their ankles, but he’d make sure his opponent regretted whatever they did to set him off.

“It’s not my fault bullies tend to be on the bigger side.”

“Well, you know what they say. Nature has a way of balancing things out. The big beefy ones are always dumbasses. Their height and muscles compensate for their severe lack of brain power.” And if Tony is including Bucky in that assessment, he’s not going to say it overtly, but Steve is smart. He’ll pick up on the slight and then make some half-hearted remark in his friend’s defense.

However, against expectation, the guy falls silent on the line, so much so that Tony thinks the call might have dropped. “Hey winghead, you still there?”

“Yeah. I was just wondering… are you coming home for Thanksgiving in a couple weeks?”

“No can do. I have this big project for my robotics final, and it’s the only uninterrupted time I’ll get in the lab.”

“Oh, uh… Christmas, then?”

“Sure thing.”

Steve had been a touch cagey on the phone, but Tony puts it out of his mind. The guy is sentimental. He probably just missed having someone else under the age of thirty-five in the house.

It isn’t until he comes home the following month that Tony realizes Steve omitted one not-so-tiny detail.

Tony looks Steve in the eye, his line of sight hovering a good six inches higher than he had anticipated. “You grew,” he says after a beat.

“Yeah. It happens. Growth spurt,” Steve says, thoroughly amused. “I guess it all happened at once, huh?”

He’d been filling out, too. Whereas Steve had been a scrawny shrimp a mere four months prior, now he had grown tall – taller than Tony even – and while still slim, he’d started to bulk up a bit as well.

“You planning to stop anytime soon?” Any taller and Tony might get a complex.

Steve shrugs and gives him a self-satisfied smile. “Maybe after a couple more inches. I’d like to break six feet for the bragging rights.”

“Greedy. You’re being greedy,” Tony grouses. He hunches over then thinks better of it as he tries to stand taller, his back straight, almost overextended in his attempt to become eye level with Steve. “Why not save some height for the rest of us mere mortals?”

“You can have it if you can figure out how to bottle up my excess and inject it into your veins.”

That’s a thought, but “I’m an engineer, not a biologist.”

“Well then, I guess that means you’re out of luck. Besides, you look like you’ve aged four years in four months.” He uses his thumb and forefinger to mirror the shape of Tony’s goatee on his own face.

Tony bats Steve even as he blushes at the observation. He knew he should have shaved before heading home.

“You boys going to stand in the driveway all day or will you be coming inside for a snack?” Ms. Sarah calls out from the door as Jarvis walks past carrying Tony’s bags.

Steve steps aside, his arms out in a flourish. “After you. Age before beauty.”

Tony scoffs. “I’m only a month older than you!”

“One month five days.”

And so he saunters past. “Pearls before swine,” he states before racing Steve to the door. Tony reaches the handle first, but Steve nearly lifts him up, removing Tony bodily so he can cross the threshold before him.

“That’s cheating!” Tony protests.

Steve only smiles. “I didn’t want to make a liar out of you.”

“Ass.”

“Language,” he says without skipping a beat.

“…Did you seriously just ‘language’ me?”

Steve has been spending far too much time with the geriatric set.

He rubs the back of his neck, moderately embarrassed. “It’s not a big–”

“Remind me: How old are you again? Fifteen going on fifty?”

“Is that the look you’re going for?” Steve snaps back.

Tony isn’t sure if it’s the distance or Steve’s new physique, but during the six weeks of Christmas break, he develops something of a crush on the other boy. Whenever Steve looks at him, he feels giddy, almost shy, and even his casual touch is electrifying.

“Steve, can you please pass the rolls?” Tony’s mother had requested during lunch.

Steve had complied, but when he passed the basket to Tony as an intermediary, Tony nearly dropped the entire thing when Steve’s fingers brushed up against his wrist. Steve had steadied the basket before it could fall.

“You okay?” he had asked.

“Tony, you should pay attention,” Howard had interjected. “Your mother and I rarely see you these days, and we’d prefer you be present when possible.”

Tony had made his excuses. “I just… I got a lot on my mind.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.

Of course, nothing can ever come of it. Not only is Steve so painfully, so obviously straight, but he is one of Tony’s closest friends, and Tony would rather have Steve in his life as a friend than scare him away with what will soon prove to be a passing fancy.

“You want to watch some football later with the guys?” Steve offers. “I’m going to record it, too. The Giants are real good this year. They’re going to make the playoffs.”

It would never work.

* * *

“What’s with the peach fuzz?” Bucky had teased, zeroing in on the change in Tony’s appearance almost immediately. “Trying out something new for the ladies? Does it tickle?”

“Would you like to come over here and find out?” Tony retorts, puckering up to make kissy-faces at Bucky.

“…Gay.”

Steve nearly fumbles the remote while Pinky loudly complains, “Hey dickheads, swap spit on your own time. The game is starting!”

* * *

If Tony had missed Steve and their friends during fall semester, those feelings become more acute the following spring. Having sampled a taste of his old life during the break, Tony feels their absence as classes start up again. He misses Manhattan as well as having friends and being among people his own age. Life at MIT feels so barren by comparison…

At least until he meets honeybear.

In an ill-advised attempt to fit in, Tony had attended an off-campus frat party. Dressed in an MIT sweatshirt with the hood up and sporting patchy facial hair, Tony had passed as a regular freshman. It had helped that the party was dark and everyone else was already wasted.

Upon entering the living room, he had grabbed a beer to give himself something to hold, and then another when he had drained the first out of nervousness and lack of anything better to do. The alcohol loosens something inside him; whether it’s a psychological or physical effect of the social lubricant is hard to say, but halfway through his third, Tony is speaking a mile a minute to an enthralled audience of fellow co-eds, discussing the ethical considerations of emerging artificial intelligence technology.

He’s talking up an attractive blonde from BU when he spots Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome, made to appear even taller with his stylish flat top.

Black is indeed beautiful.

“Why hello there, gorgeous. Aren’t chu a tall drink o’ water?”

The guy had just stared at him, his eyes traveling from Tony’s baby face to the beer in his hand. “…Not that it’s any of my business, but are you here for a campus visit? Where’s your host?” He surveys the party, trying to find the person responsible for Tony’s presence. “I know not everyone here is 21, but there are limits, man.”

“I’mma freshman,” Tony slurs, vaguely insulted and wondering why the hot guy is standing so far away. He tries to step closer, misjudges, and nearly plasters himself against the stranger’s chest.

Instead of pushing him off entirely, the guy grabs his shoulders and holds him at arm’s length. “In high school?”

Just then, the lights turn on, and there’s a commotion in the foyer as a duo of police officers muscle their way through the front door and announce themselves. Mr. Big Hands swears, grabs Tony, and hurries them out the back, getting lost in the flood of underage partygoers fleeing the cops.

“My place or yours?” Tony says coyly.

But the stranger isn’t having it as he quickly frog-marches Tony towards the back fence. “Quiet.”

So Tony tries again. “Come with me if you want to live?”

“Come with me if you don’t want to get arrested,” he states blandly. He gives Tony a boost, helping him up and over the fence into the neighbor’s yard, before scaling it himself shortly after. Tony stumbles on the other side, falling face-first into the bushes before rolling onto his back to stare up at the night sky. Disoriented and aching, he considers the wisdom of spending the night amongst the azaleas, but Prince Charming pulls him up yet again and leads them both out the garden’s side gate so that they exit on a street parallel to the frat house.

He breathes a sigh of relief. “That was a close one.”

“How about a kiss to celebrate?” Tony suggests as he clumsily maneuvers once again into the guy’s personal space.

The stranger side-steps him. “How about not. You’re like fifteen.”

“I’ll be sixteen in three months.”

Now the stranger looks surprised. “Jesus, are you… you’re serious, aren’t you? I was kidding about that.”

“Sixteen is legal in Boston,” Tony points out rather unhelpfully.

“I’m not gay.”

“Neither am I.”

“Or bisexual.”

Tony gives him a loose one-armed shrug. “Well, nobody’s perfect,” he says, moments before vomiting all over the man’s sneakers.

* * *

By the time Tony mostly sobers up an hour later, he’s absolutely mortified. “I’m so sorry,” he repeats for what has to be the twentieth time.

The stranger is rinsing his formerly brand-new Air Jordans in the bathroom sink of Tony’s dorm room, his socked feet tucked into Tony’s shower shoes. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, though he sounds annoyed and isn’t quite looking at Tony, concentrated as he is on the task at hand.

“No really, I’ll pay for replacements. I’m– I’m good for it.”

How much could another pair of shoes possibly cost? One hundred dollars? Two hundred? Tony sucked at _The Price Is Right,_ but it couldn’t be much more than that.

“I’m sure you are, Stark.”

The name catches his attention. “You know who I am?”

“Yeah. The child prodigy in my materials class.” The guy tries to scrub out a particularly difficult stain, and Tony wonders if he’s imagining Tony’s neck under his rough fingers. “Fifteen. MIT student. Deeply philosophical musing on theoretical tech. It wasn’t that hard to put two and two together, though I’m surprised you came out tonight. Aren’t you usually holed up in your dorm or the labs?”

Tony shrinks in on himself. “I wanted… well, I just wanted to be a regular student. Have the normal college experience, you know. Besides, I wasn’t that bad at it. Cindy was really into me.” Five minutes longer and he’s sure he could have gotten her number.

The guy stops, turns to look at him, disbelief clear on his face. “We talking the blonde student you were chatting up tonight? Amber?”

“…Was that her name?” Tony snaps his fingers. “She looked like a Cindy. But yeah, she liked me. I could tell.”

“Hate to break this to you, but Amber was trying to escape that conversation.”

“No…”

“Yeah, man. Why’d you think I came over? She was giving me ‘help me’ eyes, and I thought I’d run interference.”

“Oh.” In hindsight, that explained why she kept mentioning needing to refresh her drink or be literally anywhere else, and Tony had followed her around like a lost, exceptionally-clueless puppy. Perhaps his audience wasn’t even as charmed as he had imagined they were and were silently wishing he’d just shut up, but he couldn’t take a hint. He had wanted to fit in and instead had come off as some weirdo with boundary issues, hadn’t he?

“I’ll still replace your shoes… uh…”

Shit, he didn’t even know the guy’s name.

“James. James Rhodes, but most people call me Jim.”

“Jim?” Tony cants his head to the side. He already knows a Jim back home – two in fact – though one goes by Jacques because he’s a pretentious asshole. This guy didn’t seem like a Jim. “How about I call you Rhodey?”

Rhodey clutches the edge of the sink and drops his head with a sigh.

“...You’re not good at this people thing, are you?”

* * *

‘Rhodey’ sticks, both the name and the man himself. He doesn’t much mind the moniker, preferring it to Tony’s other nicknames for him: honeybear, platypus, and – when Rhodey is in a foul mood – sourpatch. He quickly becomes a fixture in Tony’s life as he takes the younger student under his wing.

“So, what you’re saying is girls like to be called women?” Tony had asked one day while they were studying for their computational thinking exam.

Rhodey doesn’t even pause from reviewing his notes from their most recent lecture as he replies, “If she’s at least 18, yeah man. No one likes being talked down to.”

Tony supposes he can understand that. Still–

“But how do you talk to them? Like… what line do you use to seal the deal?”

“For starters: You don’t. You’re underage.”

“But when I’m older, what do you say?” he persists. “Do you use a pick-up line or is there some combination of–”

“I’m gonna stop you right there. You talk to women like you would talk to me,” Rhodey says, but he seems to think better of it when he recalls their first meeting. “You know what? Scratch that. You talk to women like you would talk to someone you’re interested in beyond what’s in their pants. You know, like a person.”

Tony thins his eyes at his friend. “…Really?” he deadpans.

“Shocking, I know, but recent research suggests women are people.”

“No need to be a dick about it. I was just asking a question.”

“For the sixth time,” Rhodey points out. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Listen Tones, there are no magic words or phrases that will make every woman say yes. You just need practice.”

But sometimes, their friendship stumbles over deeper rifts.

“Come on, Rhodey,” Tony begs one day. “All we have to do is get some of the guys together, dismantle a car, and make some cosmetic modifications to it to make it look like a campus police cruiser, then reassemble it on the roof of the Great Dome.”

But Rhodey is shaking his head. “No way, man. You do what you want, but I’m sitting this one out.”

“We’ll be legends.”

He crosses his arms, steeling himself against Tony’s infamous determination. “I worked hard to get where I am. I’m not blowing it on a prank.”

“It’s MIT tradition.”

“It’s expulsion.”

“No, it’s not!” Tony exclaims in frustration. “Why do you have to be such a sourpuss about this, sourpatch?”

Rhodey frowns, tilting his head to regard his friend. “Tones… how many black friends you got? Am I your first?”

“No, uh… Gabe, he’s um… he’s African American.”

“Riiight.” He nods, rubs his chin in thought. “And Gabe’s what? Your age? Couldn’t even drive yet when you left, right?”

Tony rolls his eyes. _Another crack at his age?_

“What’s your point?”

Rhodey sighs, deciding to speak plainly of an uncomfortable truth. “Look Tones, maybe _you_ can pull this prank off and not get in trouble for it. You’ll receive a pat on the back. Boys will be boys, you know. That’s what they’ll say: Boys’ll be boys, especially if they’re white. And rich. But a black man on scholarship tries to pull that shit, and it’s just not gonna fly, okay? I’m sorry, but those are the facts, and wishing it was different isn’t going to make it so.”

That gives Tony pause. He had never considered what it would look like from the other side, that Rhodey’s experiences and risk/benefit analysis would be any different than his own. He feels vaguely ashamed as he fidgets and shuffles his feet, uncertain of what to say.

Rhodey reiterates, “So, if you’re putting a cop car on a building – even a fake one – it’s gotta be without me; got it?”

“Okay, I got it,” Tony agrees, sounding defeated. There’s another beat before he asks, tentatively, carefully: “Is it… do you always have to think about that?”

“Every goddamn day. I can’t afford not to.”

“That’s not right.”

“No. It’s not.”

Rhodey is Tony’s best friend at MIT, and he desperately wants the feeling to be mutual. And so they study and hang out together until Tony is fairly certain he’s grown on Rhodey, like a taste for fine wine or (more accurately) an infestation of black mold.

He often talks to Steve about his new friend.

“Honeybear’s at the National Society of Black Engineers tonight. He’s angling to be president by senior year,” Tony gushes over the phone. “And he can pull it off, too. He’s got real leadership potential, you know. No bullshit.”

“You really like this guy, huh?”

“Yeah. Who wouldn’t? He said he’d stop by the Mansion this summer. He has an internship with Oscorp this summer, but I’m trying to poach him for SI.”

Rhodey would be a great asset to their projects for the Department of the Defense, maybe not anything high security considering his age and inexperience, but over time–

“He’s a mechanical engineering student, too?”

“Aerospace,” Tony specifies. “It’s basically a specialization of mechanical engineering. We’re in a lot of the same classes, so we end up studying together a lot. He’s not like the other people in my dorm. It’s just nice being able to talk about applied mechanics and have him understand what I’m saying, you know?”

“He sounds great, Tony. Real great.” Steve says, but his voice is subdued.

“Cap?”

“Hm?”

“Something wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” Steve says, but Tony knows he only has to wait a few minutes before– “It’s just that… well… I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

And because Tony has known Steve for years (and because he might have felt the same way about Bucky in the early days), he doesn’t make Steve squirm. “You’re still one of my best friends, you know. Just because I’m hanging out with Rhodey doesn’t mean it changes anything between you and me.”

“I know that!” Steve protests in such a way that Tony knows he didn’t.

“I know you know,” Tony lies. “I’m just saying it so it’s out there. None of that unspoken crap, because we’re men, and men don’t do that.”

Real life is not a romantic comedy where Steve is his best gal and they don’t say anything to each other for years out of a mutual desire not to ruin what they have. For one thing: Steve is a boy and straight, so it’s not like there’s any sexual tension there, and secondly, Tony hates rom coms. They’re just so contrived, so unrealistic, and everything would be resolved in five minutes if the two parties could just be honest and talk to each other about what is really on their mind.

“…Right,” Steve agrees.

Tony stares at the opposite wall, mentally tracing figures in his neighbor’s corkboard, connecting unrelated puncture marks dotting the surface to form geometric shapes. “So, tell me about Pinky and his pursuit of his one and only again? Did he manage to speak to her yet?”

“Of course not. That would require him to string together words and thoughts into something a human person can understand.”

“Which is impossible in her presence,” Tony finishes. “Some things never change.”

* * *

When Steve meets Rhodey that summer, Tony introduces them and waits for a tense minute as they appear size each other up.

Rhodey holds out a hand to Steve, who accepts. “Tony’s told me so much about you.”

“Likewise,” Steve replies.

“So uh… I got to know. Has he always been…”

“Yes.”

“Hey!” Tony exclaims.

* * *

Tony spends the next two years shuffling between MIT and Stark Mansion in Manhattan, between his college life with Rhodey and home life with Steve. He comes to understand what Steve meant all those years ago, about needing to straddle two worlds and learning how to show different facets of yourself under varying circumstances. He thinks he is the best, most authentic version of himself when he is with Steve or Rhodey, a fact he mentions to honeybear one night in the man’s off-campus apartment when they’re both high and he’s feeling acutely nostalgic.

“Steve… I know you don’t know him well, but Steve is amazing, honeybear. A real stand-up guy,” Tony babbles as he takes another hit. “And he gives like… the best hugs, you know. No exaggeration. Really holds onto you, makes you feel safe and wanted and warm. I love his hugs. They’re the best. Steve is the best.”

Rhodey yawns – it really is getting late – and snorts. “Sounds like you love the guy.”

“Of course I do. He’s my oldest friend.”

“No no no… it sounds like you’re in love with the guy,” Rhodey clarifies. He begins to giggle softly to himself at the idea.

Tony sits up, his back straight and eyes wide. “Oh my God, you’re a genius,” he dives for the phone. “I have to tell him!” he tries to dial, but his fingers are clumsy and slow, much slower than Rhodey who similarly flops over and slams a limp hand down on the cradle of the phone to cut the call. Tony tries to push him off, but Rhodey is persistent, slapping him away.

“Rhodey, come on! Don’t be a dick!”

But Rhodey captures Tony’s hands in his own and pins him to the couch. “Tones, think about what you’re doing!” he says urgently, his eyes wide and slightly bloodshot.

Tony begins to struggle, trying to break out and reach the phone. “I have. I love Steve, and I’m gonna tell him.”

“It can wait until morning.”

“Why do I have to wait at all?”

“Because once you say it, you can’t put the cat back in the bag, got it?” Rhodey says. “You tell him, and it’s out there, and you can’t take it back.”

“I don’t want to take it back.”

“You’ll regret it, Tones. When you sober up and Steve knows and you know he knows, you’ll regret it.”

“It won’t change anything!”

“If you believe that, then you can wait another eight or nine hours to call.” Rhodey looks pointedly at the clock. “Besides, it’s like 1 a.m. He’s probably asleep. If you’re going to confess your eternal, undying love, don’t you want him to be awake to appreciate it?”

Tony stops, considers it. “…I s’pose you’re right.”

“Yeah, I’m right. Now, you’re going to bed,” Rhodey unplugs the phone before grabbing an extra pillow and blanket for Tony to sleep on the couch.

At breakfast, Tony does thank Rhodey. He shudders to think what would have happened if the man hadn’t been there to stop his more-destructive impulses.

“If you still want to call Steve and tell him how you feel, I plugged the phone back in,” Rhodey suggests, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Tony kicks him under the table. “I was high. The weed was probably laced with E or something.”

“It was not, and-”

“I’m not in love with Steve.”

“Mm hm.”

“I’m not,” he reiterates, but the protest sounds hollow and unconvincing even to his own ears.

* * *

The guys graduate high school that summer – Steve and Bucky and all of them – and scatter shortly after as they enter the next phase of their lives. Bucky and Dum Dum enlist in the army after graduation, while Jim goes to technical school. Jacques becomes a plumber’s apprentice. Pinky gets a job at his stepfather’s grocery store, and Gabe attends community college while hoping to transfer to a SUNY later.

Tony offers to cosign on Steve’s student loans, but Steve declines his offer, instead attending part-time community college for graphic design while working retail in a paint shop.

“I want to go to school for art,” Steve says over a lunch of burgers. “I’m probably not going to make enough money to pay you back for a fancy education.”

Tony hadn’t even considered the money a loan. “If you can’t pay me back, I’m not planning to hire an enforcer to break your kneecaps, Cap,” he replies, playfully stealing a french fry from Steve’s plate.

Steve commandeers an onion ring from Tony in retaliation. “I just don’t want your money to come between us. I don’t want it to make things weird.”

Tony supposes it is refreshing that Steve doesn’t want his money, has never wanted it in fact.

It is also frustrating.

“Consider me a patron of the arts,” he tries again.

“I’m sorry, shellhead,” and Steve does sound regretful, “but I think this is something I’m going to have to do by myself. I’ve got to stand on my own two feet eventually.”

“Okay fine,” Tony declares. “But I’m hiring you to make a logo for a new division of Stark Industries. I’m thinking green energy or something.”

“Or something?”

“I’ll figure it out. It’s not like you’re graduating anytime soon,” he looks over at the dessert menu on the small laminated marquee on their table. “Want to split a slice of apple?”

* * *

Tony starts his final year of grad school the following semester. He is eighteen now and not quite as out of place as he once was in the dorms.

“Stank! There’s a Tim Dugan on the phone for you,” one of Tony’s floor-mates calls from the hallway phone booth.

Tony peaks his head out from the open door of his dorm, his eyes bleary and hair wild. He’d been up for days putting the finishing touches on his robotics final: a low-cost device to detect and neutralize noxious fumes for use in coal mines and other tight, airless spaces, but the little guy had been beside himself over piles of dirty laundry and half-eaten boxes of rotting Chinese takeout, circling ground zero and attempting to remove the biohazard to a relatively-safe distance in the far corner.

His floor-mate rolls his eyes, his hand over the receiver. “You planning to take this or not?” he asks. “I don’t got all day.”

Tony nearly trips over himself, kicking off some wires as he exits. He grabs the phone and leans casually against the adjacent wall.

“Hey Dumbass.”

There’s a soft harrumph on the other end. “I told you to stop calling me that.”

“No can do, Private First Class Dum Dum,” Tony says brightly. He waves at a gaggle of girls passing by. One of them, a striking redhead named Sunset, is younger than most, but at twenty, the graduate student is still two years his senior. They had had a passing flirtation Tony’s sophomore year until she realized just how young he was and told him to look her up when he turned eighteen. Tony had planned to, but by the time his birthday rolled around, he had heard disturbing rumors about how she had suckered that rube Justin Hammer out of some early prototypes. None of what she stole had been functional of course, but it was the thought that counted.

Dum Dum sighs, bringing Tony back to the matter at hand. “Never gonna live that name down,” he grumbles before getting down to business. “Look, Bucky told me not to call, saying that we should respect the guy’s wishes, and normally, I’d agree, but fuck that, you know?”

Tony must be tired because contrary to Dum Dum’s straight-shooter reputation, the man isn’t making sense.

“So… you think you can make it back to the City this weekend?” he finishes.

Tony stretches, cracking his back as he straightens up and yawns. “I don’t know, man. I got deadlines coming up. Papers, presentations, you know the drill.”

He probably didn’t considering he and Bucky enlisted directly after high school, but Tony thinks public high school still had things like tests and projects.

“Tony,” Dum Dum says, his tone serious, missing the jocular quality common to his speech. “Stevie’s mom died. The wake is this weekend.”

“…What?” That made no sense. Ms. Sarah was much younger than Tony’s parents even; she couldn’t have been much more than forty.

“It was cancer. Steve didn’t tell any of us, except Bucky before we shipped out, and Bucky didn’t tell me until she died. You know how the guy is. He probably thought she’d get better and didn’t want to be a bother.”

Tony rubs his face, his fingers traveling up to run through his hair. “How’s he doing?”

“You know Stevie. Stiff upper lip.”

“How long has he been spending in the gym? Has he moved on to bare knuckle brawling yet?”

Dum Dum chuckles at that, but it falls flat. “Your parents are taking care of the arrangements, and he’s staying at the Mansion after, so… there’s that at least.”

“Howard making him clean toilets nowadays?” Tony wouldn’t put it past the bastard, but still…

“Naw, not that Stevie’s said. I think they’re just letting him stay indefinitely.”

“The old man always did have a soft spot for Steve.”

And why wouldn’t he? Steve is all baseball and apple pie – polite, courteous, athletic, and straight as nails – the epitome of the wholesome all-American man and everything Tony wasn’t. Though Howard never said it outright, Tony suspected his father actually preferred Steve to him some (most) days. He certainly spent more time with Steve than his own flesh-and-blood son the past three years, not that Tony ever held it against Steve.

“It’s good for him. Can you imagine going through all that and being evicted on top of everything? At least he has a home.”

“I’ll be there this weekend.”

And now Dum Dum sounds uncertain, even though he had achieved his desired result. “You sure? Stevie didn’t want to interrupt your studies. Your program is very competitive; cut-throat, he says.”

It figures Steve would worry about that, even at a time like this.

“Yeah, but don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.”

* * *

Tony’s version of ‘figuring it out’ involves a welder and University President Jerome Wiesner’s car. The prank is messy, clunky, and missing the finesse and intelligence of a truly great MIT hack, but it gets the job done. Of course, Tony had copped to the deed immediately and was suspended for the rest of the academic year. Rhodey had been quick to point out that had Tony been anyone else, he would have been expelled, but as it stands, he _is_ a Stark, with all the inherent privileges and restrictions that the name entails.

Howard was less amused, and when Jarvis had picked him up at the train station, he had warned Tony that his father had locked himself in the study, where he had been on the phone the entire morning, trying to clean up his mess.

“That really isn’t necessary, J. Howard is just wasting his time,” Tony had told him as he places his small carry-on into the trunk on top of the other luggage Jarvis had already stowed away.

“I do not believe he considers it a waste of time to ensure your speedy return to your studies.”

“It’s only for the semester. I’ll be back in the fall.”

“You will find that Mr. Stark would prefer a… shorter sabbatical as it were,” Jarvis tries to warn him.

“Well, he can prefer all he wants. Wiesner isn’t letting me back on campus for the next six months at least. That should be long enough to make an example out of me, so no one else attempts to do what I did,” Tony slides into the car and waits for Jarvis to get in before segueing into the meat of the matter. “A little bird told me about Ms. Sarah…”

“Did he now?” Jarvis looks into the rearview mirror at his charge. “She was a fine woman. I am sorry that she has passed. She was very young.”

“Yeah… and um… well, how’s Steve handling it?”

“As well as can be expected. The wake is tomorrow, but I suspect you knew that already.”

Tony looks put out. “That obvious, huh?”

“Your timing is highly suggestive. I doubt it has escaped your father’s notice.”

“Well, not much he can do about it, is there?”

“There is a lot he can do, Anthony,” Jarvis says, deadly serious. “What he _will_ do… well, that is another thing entirely.”

Howard can disown Tony for all he cares; Tony is 18 – an adult – and there is little his father can threaten him with that will keep Tony under his thumb in such matters.

“You think we can pick up a pie on the way back? Apple with the lattice top from that one place. You know the one, across from that fancy grocery store. It’s Steve’s favorite.”

* * *

Steve is sitting in his room, staring at his hands when Tony knocks on his open door. He bears an entire pie cradled in one arm with a single fork sticking straight up from the middle to suggest the recommended serving size.

“I, um… I brought pie,” he says lamely. He steps halfway into the room, uncertain what to say, uncertain whether there is anything he should say, anything he can say. Steve’s mother, his only living relative, is dead. It’s much too soon, and it’s not fair, and there’s nothing Tony can do that will make it any better. “It’s really good pie.”

Steve chokes on nothing, and hides his face in his hands as he curls in on himself and weeps. Grief is a high, piercing whine ending in a punched-out hiccough then revving up once again.

Tony leaves the pie on the dresser and goes to sit beside Steve, turning to collect the man in his arms. Steve simply clings to him and cries.

* * *

It is a lovely service.

Tony’s parents had sprung for the nice flower arrangement, snow white and voluminous, to adorn her coffin. It’s closed casket. Tony understands that it is because Ms. Sarah had been much too thin and frail in the end, hardly recognizable to those who had not witnessed her decline in the final six months.

Steve is doing much better, or as much as can be expected. He pretends well enough when the guys pay their respects and when Bucky tries to convince him to stay over at his parents’ place for a few days while he is on leave, ~~so he can keep an eye on him~~ like when they were kids.

“Thank you, Buck, but I can get by on my own,” Steve declines.

Bucky gives him a friendly pat on the shoulder, letting the contact linger a touch longer than necessary. “The thing is, you don’t have to. I’m with you to the end of the line, pal.”

“I’m fine.”

Steve is not fine. Tony knows it, and Tony is pretty sure Bucky knows it. He can see it in the slight tremor of Steve’s hands, in the way his eyes are level with everyone’s shoes, in the low haunch of his shoulders.

After the burial when everyone (including Bucky) has left, Tony hangs out in Steve’s room. He tells him about his suspension, about President Wiesner’s car and securing his spot in the annals of MIT history. The timing had been coincidental, he claims.

Steve isn’t convinced. “Thanks for coming home, Tony. I really appreciate it.”

Tony knows he means it, but Steve still sounds so lost, so forlorn that Tony suggests, “You and me, we should get out of here for a little bit. I saw this list of the top 100 best burgers in America. What do you think? Road trip?”

Steve gives him an odd look, his brows drawn together. “Don’t you have to return to MIT eventually?”

“I’m a little ahead; I think I can take off the rest of the semester.”

“Your dad won’t like that.”

“Howard can suck eggs,” Tony says with more than a little heat. “I’ve already finished my bachelors, and I’ve only got a year left before I graduate my master’s program, while most people our age are still deciding between MIT and Harvard.”

But Steve isn’t buying it. “Most people our age didn’t get in to either.”

“Point still stands. I can afford to take off a few months to figure out if a bunch of premiere critics ranked burgers correctly. It seems like a better use of my time, you know, and if you want to tag along… I could always use a wingman, winghead.”

 _Come on, don’t make me beg,_ he doesn’t say.

“You don’t have to go on a cross-country trip just to make me feel better.”

“You’re so vain, I bet you think this suspension is about you, don’t you?”

Steve raises a brow. “Isn’t it?”

He has Tony on that one.

“…I could use the break,” Tony tells him instead. “Just think about it, Steve. Wide open roads, new locales, plenty of hot and willing local girls. We could do all fifty states. I mean, some states will be kind of tricky. Like Alaska. Kind of far, sparsely populated, and the sex ratio is just not in our favor, you know. Plus, their food sucks, unless it’s like salmon or whatever. I don’t know if they even have the components of a decent burger or if everything has to be like… flown in by plane, but we can’t just skip Alaska. That would be crazy, right?” He considers it briefly before replying, “Right.”

A man can’t claim to have had sex in all fifty states without Alaska, and where’s the glory in stopping at 49?

Steve crosses his arms. “Sounds like a good way to catch HIV,” he states.

Tony only rolls his eyes and sighs. “Don’t tell me you’re still saving yourself for Peggy Carter.” He can’t possibly still be holding a torch for her after nearly a decade of little to no contact.

…Right?

Steve doesn’t quite look at the other man as he admits, “No, of course not,” but in such a way that Tony immediately knows he’s hiding something.

And so he inquires, “Still have a thing for brunettes?”

Steve blushes, which he takes as a yes.

“Okay, spill. What’s her name, winghead?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, I know that look,” Tony says, giving Steve a knowing smile. “Little Stevie has a crush.”

“I do _not_.”

“What’s she like?”

“Nonexistent.”

“Really? That’s how you want to play this? I know you better than that. There’s someone you like, and if you just tell me about her, I can help you come up with a game plan to win her over. I’m good at that sort of thing. Genius, remember?”

Tony means for it to be comforting, but Steve just looks miserable. “It’ll never work. She doesn’t like me that way.”

“Have you even tried?” Tony can tell by the look on his face that Steve hasn’t. _Typical._ “You know you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Steve turns his gaze askew as he rubs the back of his neck. “It’s not… She– she doesn’t like men in general, all right?”

 _Ah, now_ that _is an insurmountable problem._

And of course, Tony has to be a dick about it. “Really, Steve? A lesbian? Why do you always have to like the permanently-unavailable ones?”

“Tony–”

“I mean… Could you give me a little something to work with here?”

“I can’t help it, okay? I’m just–” Steve sighs, borderline miserable. “It is what it is.”

“I guess, but that doesn’t mean your dick stops working. I can totally get you laid, so you can forget all about she-who-shall-not-be-named.” A good fuck usually lifted Tony’s mood, helped him gloss over all sorts of disappointments and things that could never be. Tony isn’t quite sure if it works the same with grief, but it might distract Steve for a little while.

Steve only looks at him, his expression unreadable. “I don’t think that’s going to work.”

“You never know until you try.”

They only get as far as DC before Howard summons them back. He had talked to President Wiesner, promised MIT a new library wing or whatnot to allow Tony back that very semester. Tony had thought he had caused enough property damage to earn himself the semester off, but he had made a slight miscalculation. He either underestimated the amount of hush money Howard is willing to pay to make certain indiscretions disappear or overestimated the president’s pride. It’s disappointing, but he supposes every man has his price.

And adding insult to injury, he hadn’t managed to get Steve laid, not even once.

“Come on, Steve… one for you, one for me,” he had tried to tempt him in Philadelphia when he had managed to land twins.

_Twins!_

But Steve must be a saint with the fortitude of the pope himself because he had simply glanced over at the two blonde bombshells and told him, “You go on ahead, Tony. I’ll just… I’ll wait by the ice machine.”

Already at the end of his patience with Steve’s many _many_ refusals, Tony had massaged his forehead and sucked in a steadying breath. “…Are you kidding me right now? What’s the problem this time? Are they too flirty? Too available? What’s your deal?”

“Can you even tell them apart?”

“What does that matter? There’s two of them. That’s like… the ultimate fantasy, right?”

“I just don’t want to lose it to someone I met three hours ago. I know it’s prudish, but I just want it to be special, you know?”

“Not really, no.” Tony had lost it on a stranger’s bed at a frat party first chance he got. “But you know what? It’s your decision.”

Steve shakes his head. “I just don’t want to have any regrets.”

“Now that’s something I understand,” Tony gives him a pat on the back then turns away, giving the man a slight wave over his shoulder as he walks away. “See you in a couple hours, winghead.”

Unfortunately for Tony, reality is not pornography, and the twins are not conducive to sharing. He had only earned himself a slap and iced soda poured in his lap at the suggestion.

And so by the time Howard calls their hotel room and very sternly orders Tony back to MIT, Tony wants to tell him to fuck off, that he’s not done finding himself yet (AKA he hasn’t gotten Steve laid).

“You will be back in Boston by Monday,” Howard orders him. “This is not up for discussion.”

Tony disagrees. “I’m 18; you can’t tell me what to do anymore.” He eyes the bathroom door and listens for the drone of the shower.

“I still pay your bills.”

_This again?_

“So what? I have my bachelor’s already. I could walk into Raytheon next week and land myself a job.”

“You most certainly will _not_.”

He tries to reason with his father. “Listen. I’ll be back in the fall. It’s not that long, in the grand scheme of things.”

“What about Steven?” Howard asks, his voice low but firm.

“What _about_ Steven?”

“He’s with you right now. Some would say that makes him complicit. Your mother promised Sarah to take care of the boy before she passed, but… he’s 18 now, too, isn’t he? No longer a boy by your reckoning.”

“…You wouldn’t,” Tony nearly hisses.

“Go back to MIT, and we’ll never find out what I am willing to do to ensure your future. Everybody wins.”

If it had just been Tony at risk of being disowned, he would have called Howard’s bluff in a heartbeat, but he can’t do it to Steve, jeopardize his home and welfare just to prove a point.

And so he backs down. “Alright. Monday.”

“I knew you could be reason–”

Tony hangs up. He lies back on the bed then covers his face in his hands and wants to scream.

Steve exits the bathroom shortly after, toweling his hair dry. He gives Tony a cursory glance. “I’m sure you would have gotten lucky if you didn’t try to hit on both of them at the same time,” he tells him.

Tony’s hands slide down. “…What?”

Steve grasps either end of the towel, pulling it taut across the back of his neck. He shrugs. “You’re looking mighty sore, and I’m just saying, you could have made it happen if you focused on one.”

 _Ah. The twins._ Tony had almost forgotten. “You know what they say: Go big or go home,” he says flippantly.

Steve doesn’t quite look at him when he says, “Speaking of, I was thinking… if you wanted, maybe it was time we did head home, you know? I know what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate the thought, but I don’t really take stock in running from my problems,” he hesitates for a beat before collecting himself. “So, uh… I think it might be time we head back.”

“Okay, Steve.”

“…That’s it?” He sounds surprised.

Tony rolls over to face away from Steve. He lifts an arm, rolling his hand at the wrist. “Yeah, you’re probably bored anyway. Might as well cut our losses.”

Steve is silent at that. He approaches, sitting at the foot of the bed Tony had claimed as his own and patting Tony on the calf. “I had a lot of fun, Tony. I always enjoy spending time with you.”

“You don’t have to humor me.”

“Is it really that hard to believe I actually enjoy your company?”

“Well, when you put it that way… No. I am clearly fantastic.”

“And so humble.”

“Quiet, you,” Tony huffs but still manages to sound fond. “I still can’t believe you turned down twins. I’m sure they would have said yes if you were game.”

“Of course they would have,” Steve replies, his voice dripping with insincerity, “because Becca and Annie would have also said yes to two strange men traveling from out of state and staying in the same hotel room.”

Tony’s face twists at the suggestion. He still remembers Bucky’s sisters as fourth graders, and they’d never… not with the other one _right there_. “Gross.”

“Exactly.”

Tony supposes Steve has a point. Still, he wants to see the man squirm, even if just a little. So he suggests, “Well, what about us?”

“…What?”

“I said I’d get you laid, so I’m volunteering.” Tony gives him a leer as he suggestively rubs his calf against Steve’s side. “Take off your pants.”

Steve just stares at him in disbelief, too terrified(?) to move.

Tony can’t help it. He starts to laugh.

That seems to break the spell. Steve scowls and shoves his knee away. “Jerk.”

“You should have seen your face just now!” Tony crows, but when Steve looks put out by the joke, he tries to play it off. “Aw come on, Cap. Don’t be like that. It’s not like you were actually in danger.”

“I know that!” Steve says, his jaw tight and voice a touch too loud and way more aggressively defensive than Tony had been expecting. “You shouldn’t joke about that stuff, Tony.”

Wow, okay. Steve doesn’t have to get so worked up over a little joke. It’s not like Tony is actually calling him gay or anything. And even if he had been… was being attracted to the same sex such a bad thing?

Would Steve look at him differently if he knew Tony occasionally (and very, very discretely) batted for the other team?

“…Let’s just go to bed. We’ll drive back in the morning,” Tony suggests, feeling more disappointed than he should. It’s not like he didn’t know there wasn’t a chance Steve would react poorly to even the barest whiff of homosexuality. It wasn’t uncommon, even among people who were otherwise decent folk.

“Good night,” Steve says stiffly before he stands and makes his way to his side of the hotel room. He then slips under the covers, turns off the lights on the nightstand in between their beds, and flips over to face away from Tony.

Tony stares at the back of Steve’s head, his form just barely visible from what little neon light filters in from the edges of the blackout curtains, and he knows, with a somber sort of clarity, that he can never reveal that side of himself to Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Air Jordans hit retail in March 1985 for $65/pair.
> 
> For those who are wondering based on the conflicting hints RE: Steve background. He is part Jewish from his father’s side, but his mother is Irish Catholic. He had a mixed-faith background between his mother and paternal grandmother (before she passed).


End file.
